


The Ferry

by PermianExtinction



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Aftermath - Chuck Wendig
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Flight of the Imperialis, Is It Canon Brendol Hour Yet? Hell Naw, Late Night Bar Talk, Sad Brooding Adults, Touch-Starved Sloane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-19 03:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22204141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PermianExtinction/pseuds/PermianExtinction
Summary: Sloane’s just about worked up the courage to ask Hux if he’s coming on to her, when the commandant shifts and says, “This ship is like the space in between life and death, isn’t it? We’re on a ferryboat to the final destination.”
Relationships: Gallius Rax/Rae Sloane, Rae Sloane/Brendol Hux
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	The Ferry

**Author's Note:**

> Did you click on this fic out of morbid curiosity? Because that’s why I wrote it. 
> 
> Best enjoyed with a playlist of corny trance dance music.

The _Imperialis_ is far too luxurious and far too empty to make Sloane even the slightest bit comfortable; it’s like a haunted abandoned hotel that didn’t need to be accented by halls full of blank-faced, creepy children. When she leaves her quarters, Sloane stays on high alert. Sometimes she is completely alone. Sometimes she turns a corner and there’s a corpse-like young form in ill-fitting rags standing at attention, watching her. They never seem to be going anywhere or coming from anywhere. She cannot bear to leave her back exposed to them.

One night, when she can’t sleep, she locks herself in the lounge, which by the looks of the light fixtures could be lit with garish neon colors. There are plush seats under the tinted viewports. The barstools are cracked leather and brass. There’s even a rack of drinks in curiously shaped containers. The notion of holding an event here is perverse. Would little Armitage like to have a birthday party with his new schoolmates?

She leaves the lights off, and reaches over the bar to tap the limp bartender droid’s chassis, waiting for it to jolt its head up, glare at her with red photoreceptors, and then lunge for her throat. It used to belong to the old Emperor, after all, and the rumors of his Sith nature were probably true on all accounts.

The droid turns on. It shudders and its head bobbles on its thin neck. Sloane grips the edge of the bar countertop, transfixed by the disturbing sight.

“ _Good Eve. Ning. Honored. Guest. Would. You. Like. A Drink?_ ” The droid’s vocoder has terrible sound quality and worse cadence, but the voice itself sounds too natural, like she’s hearing spliced recordings of an actual human male speaking.

“What the hell am I… I’m insane, wow.” Sloane clears her throat, which is feeling scratchy. Dry. Maybe in need of refreshment after all. “Got anything that numbs pain?”

“ _Why. Of course. Little. Lady. Is. That. Not. The. Pur. Pose. Of. Alcohol?_ ”

“Oh, no, did they program you with bartender wisdom, I’m so sorry, you don’t have to try for my sake, really…”

 _“What. Manner. Of. Pain. Ails. You. Tonight?_ ”

“I’m not being metaphorical, someone broke my fragging ribs.”

The droid tuts and spins around on a ball base and flails its pincer arms in the space in front of the rack of bottles, as if fretting over which to choose. Its optics emit a narrow beam of light that flash over the bottles. There’s a red one shaped like a humanoid heart, there’s a clear one that reminds her of a candlestick with long faces looking out on two sides, there’s a thin pink tube wrapped like a muzzle around a blue crystal head of a snarling mynock, which is also a bottle, there’s a green one shaped like a fat woman cupping her hands over her mouth and shouting up at the heavens, but the cork has silenced her. They’re glass gargoyles; Sloane can imagine seeing one with a face she recognizes, frozen in agony or mad delight.

She sinks her head down to the counter and closes her eyes. The small spotlight tracing the colored glass has a hypnotic effect. “Just don’t poison me,” she mutters.

The droid thunks a bottle down next to her head. Sloane cracks one eye open; it’s fully of milky lilac liquid. “Looks like dishsoap.”

“It’s tolerable.”

Not the droid’s voice. Sloane sharply sits up and then wheezes when her bruised side throbs from the movement. It wasn’t the droid that put the bottle next to her, either.

She’s in the company of a hulking shadow sliding its rear onto the barstool next to the barstool next to her, and twisting off the cap on the bottle, before placing it back on the counter beside her. The droid spins to face them and its optic light traces a path over familiar disheveled red hair and pasty skin blotched with inebriation. Keen blue eyes. Too focused.

“When did you invite yourself in here?” Sloane hisses, like a cornered alley cat.

Brendol Hux’s voice is slurred and his accent is noticeably slipping. He’s lilting and pronouncing his ‘r’s. “About. Oh… An hour before you invited yourself in here. I can be quiet if I want. Quiet as a shadow.”

Which makes Sloane wonder why he didn’t sneak up behind her and crack her over the head with the bottle. She pushes it away from herself, back towards him. “Not interested.”

“Not interested in what?”

“Getting drunk with you.” Among other things. But that could just be her mind creating all sorts of paranoid possibilities.

Hux shrugs. “It would take you a while to catch up.” He helps himself to a shot of the lilac milk, pouring it into the oversized bottle cap and knocking it back as punctuation to his statement.

“So you’re an alcoholic now? Just what your son needs.”

“I’ll never be what my son needs, and you know it, Grand Admiral.” Hux measures out another shot, making sure the viscous liquor bulges over the top of the cap.

Sloane laughs hoarsely, and it feels like being stabbed in the stomach by chess pieces a few more times. “I’m not talking to you about your fragging problems, Hux.”

“Hm. Has anyone talked to you about your fragging problems lately?”

“You’re out of line,” Sloane says. Her tone is as frosted as the glass the droid places in front of her.

“ _Try. A. Sip. Of. Somma. Cider? Could. Ease. Your. Aches._ ”

Sloane sniffs the juice and decides it’s worth a try, because her store of painkillers are not only running low but too strong to use regularly.

It tastes sour, but not un-ingestibly so. She allows herself just a thimbleful.

“What else d’you expect of me, with the state I’m in?” Hux grumbles. “Can we call a truce, Grand Admiral?”

Maybe he’s trying to endear himself to her after she made it clear that he was going to behave or be sorry. He’s a hard man to read. When they sat together on the Shadow Council, Hux hid his opinions behind bluster. Or those could have been his real opinions; the other members of the council could certainly be infuriating. Sloane had always thought it was Rax’s private joke on her, pretending he was including her in an elite cabal of the Empire’s greatest minds, when they were so obviously insipid and even Rax rarely took their advice.

Sloane takes note of the single empty barstool in between herself and Hux. Left for the sake of courtesy, or perhaps he wasn’t keen on bumping shoulders with her either.

“I want music,” Hux says plaintively. “Something droning and synthesized. Decadent. You’ve got to have a jukebox in here somewhere, droid.”

“I bet it’ll give you a headache.”  
  
“Silence is worse. It’s… so loud.”

Speakers with quality as fuzzy as the droid’s voice turn on first to static, and then a song fitting Hux’s request. The ship sat on Jakku for decades, waiting to be used. Must be sand in the electronics.

“So this is what Emperor Palpatine used to listen to,” Sloane muses. “While holding senatorial cocktails, that sort of thing.” Trashy, with a repetitive rhythm and manipulatively tuned synths creating too-digestible emotions in the chords. The autotuned singer sounds tired or high, and croons lyrics about cosmic alignment and love and the never-ending night.

It’s musical syrup. Sloane swallows another mouthful of cider and realizes the melody is already stuck in her head.

She’s just about worked up the courage to ask Hux if he’s coming on to her, when the commandant shifts and says, “This ship is like the space in between life and death, isn’t it? We’re on a ferryboat to the final destination.”

“Ominous? This whole setup? Impossible.” Sloane scoffs.

“And you tend to look like you’re dying these days, Grand Admiral.”

Sloane doesn’t like his wry tone one bit. Of course he’s waiting for her to drop. Perhaps he’s been training his squadron to hasten such an event. “I’m still feeling fit enough to break you over my knee like a waterlogged plywood board.”

Hux grins and nods along to the beat of the song in the background. “That’s why you’re the boss.”

The music keeps playing, and when the track fades out and a new one starts, Sloane leans on one elbow and soaks it in. It’s the most hedonistic form of mental stimulation she’s had in a long time. But she grimly remembers the last time she was lulled into calm by a song.

Whatever the droid picked out for her really is soothing the agony in her gut, though, and it might be the relief that’s affecting her judgement, as well as a bit of a buzz in her head.

“I wish I were the boss, but we both know who’s still pulling the strings.” Kriff. She’s really getting sucked into the forbidden trope of confiding in someone late at night at a bar.

Hux grunts and raises his glass. “Here’s to the sonofabitch who got us into this mess.”

Sloane blows a kiss into the air. “Long may he rot.”

“You really liked him, huh?”

Her cheeks flame. “It was an ironic gesture. When we fought, he… he did that… it’s just…” Any attempt at justification must sound pathetic. “Don’t be crass, Hux.”

Hux points his finger at her and waves it in a circle. “You’re wearing his uniform.”

Sloane splutters indignantly. “What else was I supposed to wear? Old bloodsoaked rags?”

“Like the scrap of cape you’ve been carrying around?”

“Not exactly a token of affection! And don’t—! Don’t you dare try to say something clever about it, you can make up any sort of twisted logic you want, not everything crude is true.”

 _Why am I letting him make me defensive? I could have shut him down when this conversation started._ Ah, but then, she realizes, there wouldn’t be anyone to talk to.

“Why can’t you believe in my _hate_ , Hux?” she spat. “You of all people.”

“People you’ve always hated can’t break your heart.”

Sloane has to angle herself away and turn her head aside, so that even the dim light in the lounge can’t catch her blinking furiously. A broken heart — what an insulting, cutting concept. She admits it would be tragic if it _were_ the case, an almost appropriate tragedy to set the tone of this frightening exodus into the unknown. It makes for a neat story. Rax would have liked it for the drama alone.

“Since you’re here, I’m sure he forgave you. You wear this irresistible mask of innocence. I can almost imagine you didn’t mean it when you nearly kicked my leg in half.”

“Don’t you dare get that into your head. I meant it.”

“Of course. But like I said. I’m your man.”

Sloane shivers, twists back around, and grabs Hux’s arm, as if about to bend it into a painful knot. “And I suggest you don’t forget it, because I am not on some ferry of the dead, no matter what you think. I have never been more determined to _live_.”

Even though it’s an admonishment, a warning, her fingers tightening around his wrist tingle just to be touching another person. The skin between his cuff and glove is warm and textured with wiry hair.

Hux wets his lips and glances down at her hand.

Sloane’s used to hearing echoes, but not usually so soon after. _People you’ve always hated can’t break your heart._

Hux gulps, and stares straight ahead, jaw locked. “I would love to spite him one last time,” he mutters. “Take what he always wanted. After everything he took from me.”

Afterwards, Sloane would wonder if she only regained her senses because she looked up and glanced at the dopey, uncanny metal face of the bartender droid, and wondered if its grille mouth was leering encouragingly at her.

“… No,” she exhales. “We’re not doing that. I’ve got quite enough regrets.”

Hux does not seem offended by the rejection, although it would be hard to tell through the aura of gloom he’s always carrying. “You’d be thinking of someone else, anyway.”  
  
It’s not worth denying at this point. “And you?”  
  
“Always.” Hux’s voice cracks with emotion.

Almost contritely, Sloane withdraws her hand and nurses her drink, drains the glass to the bottom.

“Pass me that bottle,” she says, pointing at the pale purple drink Hux has been soused in for, apparently, more than an hour.

There isn’t a trace of a burn or kick to it. It tastes sweet and rich. It tastes like milk. “This is alcohol?”

“Hell no. It’s nerf kefir. Stuff never goes bad.”

She squints. “You’re telling me you’re sober? You were putting on an act? You _psychopath_.”

Hux makes a noise that Sloane reluctantly classifies as a giggle. She was right to call things off earlier. She doesn’t think she hates him nearly enough right now.

Maybe the blotching on his cheeks and nose, the redness puffing under his eyes, came from something else.

Rising from her seat, Sloane decides she’s ready to try to sleep again. This encounter might be forgotten as a strange dream in the morning. “This… will not be discussed further, of course.”  
  
Hux snorts. “You make a short conversation sound like complete and utter scandal, Grand Admiral. You don’t do this kind of thing a lot, do you?”

Embarrassed, Sloane hunches her shoulders and tries to lurk away in the dark.

“One more song,” Brendol suggests to the droid. “Can you at least _try_ to get those speakers in order?”

And for whatever reason, that request works, because after emitting a few garbled notes, the speakers finally belt out the first smooth notes of a song that rings through the lounge like a tuneful heartbeat.

“If you wanted to impress me, though,” Sloane adds over her shoulder, “you should think about this place for birthday parties.”

“For… for what now?” he splutters. “For whom?”

“You have a kid, asshole. You have a whole fragging ship full of kids.”

Hearing no response, Sloane shakes her head in disgust, stands still, and closes her eyes, and subtly taps her foot along to the music. Just one more song, she thinks.


End file.
